REVIEWS
Confessions of a Dope Dealer A long strange trip from cover
to cover
In "Confessions of a Dope Dealer," we follow prototypical disillusioned
white-boy Sheldon Norberg through his not-so-illustrious career as a small-time
marijuana and LSD 'connect' in the crazy world of California in the early '80s.
Starting off as the high-school weirdo who just wants to get everyone high
(thanks to the UC Berkeley connections of his older brother Dave), Sheldon
partakes on the ever escalating adventure of 'running the party' wherever he
happens to be, fat doob, clean hits, and screaming nitrous tank in his
meticulously fucked-up hands the whole way. From high-school hijinks to college
frat life, Dead show to Dead show, massive LSD trip to massive LSD trip, pot
growing season to pot growing season, Sheldon's own sense of responsibility to
'keep the party alive' grows heavier and more extreme with each hair-raising
turn, leaving a trail of broken-hearted women, destroyed vehicles, burnt-out
friends, and dead dogs in his ever-party hyper-paranoid wake. He eventually
turns from college drop-out to full-time Humboldt country grower, a life that
keeps him high until the government choppers and a psycho neighbor come to take
it all away from him.
Confessions of a Dope Dealer is nothing if not a page turner. Each story of
good times gone bad escalates with a psychotic rhythm that keeps the reader
screaming for some kind of lesson or insight to be learned by the author, some
little gem wisdom that he could use to wake up and turn his life around, but the
party just keeps going full tilt boogie. The zany cast of characters which fill
out this cautionary tale are the stuff of drug burnout legend: drunks who pass
out in the mud, Deadheads running around naked, psychotically paranoid weed
growers, clueless cops, acid gurus turned heroin junkies, coke tweakers, goofy
stoners, and, of course, good girls gone bad. Each section of Sheldon's big trip
are set between musings on the five elements of Chinese medicine: wood, fire,
earth, metal, and water. Each stage sheds new light on another level of
Sheldon's struggle to undo the damage he's done to his own psyche with drugs, or
how he manages to dig himself deeper and deeper with each massive dose. Sheldon
is not necessarily a likeable character, nor do his actions reflect those of a
well-meaning, self-aware individual, but we can't help feeling sympathy for him
in his Quixotic quest to keep the high alive at any cost.
While the book never has a final epiphany where Sheldon stops and says, "and
that's how I learned my lesson," and the moral of the story remains murky at
best (drugs fuck you up?), there are two chapters at the end in a section named
"Yin & Yang" where the author reflects on his life and lays out the most
eloquent examination of the wonders and dangers of drug use that I have ever
read. These are the insights I was waiting for, packed solidly into a critique
of both the self and culture, observations that could only be made by someone
who 'lived the adventure' of being an American dope dealer. Congrats for
surviving the trip Norberger, here's to better highs to come.
James
Kent - Publisher of
TRIP Magazine